This is a neat Wikipedia idea that’s been getting a lot of press today.^[1]

Monmouthpedia will be the first Wikipedia project to cover a whole town, creating articles on interesting and notable places, people, artefacts, flora, fauna and other things in Monmouth in as many languages as possible including Welsh.

We are very keen for local people to be involved in what ever way they would like. Computer skills are not that important, it’s the interest and the willingness to be involved, suggesting and writing articles, taking and donating photos and recommending good reference materials. If you speak another language it would be great place to practice your writing skills and learn new vocabulary and grammar. There are a lot of opportunities for community involvement including teaching and learning of I.T skills, local history, natural history, languages and people of different ages working together.^[2]

I can see a couple of drawbacks however.

Firstly, I’m not keen on the idea of plastering places with hundreds of ugly QRCodes.^[3]

Secondly, it seems unlikely that all of the content will persist. As an inclusionist^[4] I love the idea of gathering so much information, but many Wikipedians are die-hard deletionists who will insist that articles must meet certain notability^[5] standards.

I feel like every town should have a dedicated wiki^[6] (or dedicated area on Wikipedia) for locals to include as much minutiae as they feel compelled to add.

References

1. BBC News, Digital Spy, The Next Web, Gizmodo, 30 December 2011
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/MonmouthpediA
3. qrpedia.org – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QRpedia
4. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia
5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notability_in_Wikipedia
6. Perhaps running MediaWiki